Racial slur 'buried' by US group

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/americas/6286498.stm

Version 0 of 1.

A leading US rights group has symbolically buried the racial slur "nigger" at a ceremony in Detroit.

Hundreds of people came to watch the event organised by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The mock funeral included a "coffin" bedecked with fake black roses.

The so-called "N-word" - with its roots in American slavery - is in common usage among sections of the younger generation in the United States.

Debates

"This is the first funeral I've been to where people were happy to be here," said NAACP head Julian Bond.

"The entity in this casket deserves to be dead," he said.

Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said that "today we're not just burying the N-word, we're taking it out of our spirit".

The mock funeral was held during the annual convention of the NAACP.

The group has been campaigning against the casual use of the "N-word", especially in rap and hip-hop music, and also comedy.

Many African American community leaders regard the word as degrading and a throwback to the times of slavery when blacks were regarded as sub-human, to be bought and sold by their white owners.

But for the country's so-called hip-hop generation using the word among themselves is about self-empowerment, correspondents say.